Titanic director James Cameron is said to be “sinking Christianity� (http://www.rushprnews.com/press/archives/12391) in his upcoming documentary “The Lost Tomb of Jesus.� The show will air on the Discovery Channel March 4th. A press conference will be held today about the show. According to a news release the documentary is about “the discovery of a 2,000 year old cave containing ten coffins. Six of the ten coffins were carved with inscriptions reading the names: Jesua son of Joseph, Mary, Mary, Matthew, Jofa (Joseph, identified as Jesus’ brother), Judah son of Jesua (Jesus’ son - the filmmakers claim).� (http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3368731,00.html). I am already getting emails from students who fear that Christianity will be hurt by this discovery. Looks like the Di Vinci Code and Gospel of Judas all over again.

I did a chapel at Valley Forge Christian College on Friday (2/22). We are an Assemblies of God college, and at the moment the AG is experiencing a serious issue with the departure of younger ministers. I decided to talk about the issues giving some of the numbers and reasons headquarters says the exodus is taking place. Here are some of the statistics.

In 1986 there were 2,900 ministers under 29 years of age or 11% of total AG ministers.
In 1996 there were 2,802 ministers under 29 years of age or 9% of total AG ministers.
In 2005 there were 2,836 ministers under 29 years of age or 8% of total AG ministers.

In 1986 there were 7,217 ministers ages 30-39 years or 27% of total AG ministers.
In 1996 there were 6,936 ministers ages 30-39 years or 21% of total AG ministers.
In 2005 there were 5,240 ministers ages 30-39 years or 16% of total AG ministers.

The percentage of ministers under age 40 has dropped from 38% to 24% from 1986 through 2005.
The percentage of senior pastors under age 40 has dropped from 25% to 15% from 1996 through 2005.

All the while the average age of AG ministers has risen from 46 in 1979 to 51 in 2005.

I wonder if other denominations are experiencing something similar.

Looks like the East Coast is going to have another slippery beginning to the week. Its days like this I really miss Southern Cal.

Posted by Dwight at 2:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

It’s the first snow day of the year here in Eastern PA. The kids are happy, school is out, which also includes my wife since she teaches where the boys attend school. Amazingly, the college cancelled their classes, so we’re all home. It’s also Valentine’s Day. I’m glad the boys and I went Valentines shopping early, otherwise we’d probably be empty handed. I’m not good at romance, after 27 years I have to admit that. I am getting better, but the strange thing is now I think Sue expects less than she did earlier in our marriage. It should have been the other way around. She should have expected less in the early years when I was a bumbling idiot at love, and expect more now that I have improved my skills! Alas. I have been working through the book Sex and the Single Savior, by Dale Martin. According to Martin, no matter how bad I am at romance, the Apostle Paul was worse. Martin believes that Paul saw marriage as a mechanism for the suppression of desire. Paul was not against sex so much as he was against sexual desire. His hope was that believers would be able to control their desire without having to marry, but marriage was an option, albeit a lesser one, for weak Christians who did not have the gift of self-control. Martin laments that very foreign to Paul are modern Christians who view marriage and romance as the height of the human expression of love, and sexuality as the normal outcome of that expression. All of this is quite interesting to me at the moment as I am teaching 1 & 2 Corinthians this semester and it just so happens that we are presently in 1 Corinthians 7, a chapter to which Martin refers in his book. I don’t think Martin has Paul right, but other options are no less comforting. 1 Corinthians 7 is one of the most difficult chapters in Paul. I am convinced that almost everything he says in the chapter must be seen through the eyes of his eschatological expectations (Famines or not. See Brian Winters, “After Paul left Corinth�). I especially wonder if any of Paul’s instructions to “virgins� (where he seems to address engaged couples) are applicable to unmarried people in the present.

Posted by Dwight at 3:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I just finished a chapter for a book to be published this year on the historical Jesus. I sent it in two weeks late. Two basic problems contributed to the reason why I was late. The first is that I am lazy, and procrastinate. I put this reason first because . . . well . . . it’s first. It would have been done on time if I had simply gotten off my can sooner and gotten the job done. Whew! That was cathartic. The second reason is no fault of my own. Although I love my job teaching at Valley Forge Christian College, I must say that for scholarly work our library is seriously limited. Most of the books that I need are not in the holdings, and interlibrary loan takes too long. However, all is not lost. I live in the Northeast where there are more fine libraries than any place I know. Last Saturday I drove to Princeton Theological Seminary to do some work and gather some of the sources that I was having trouble getting. I had a good day; everything I wanted was available. It was also a nice day because the library is one of those old buildings that bears the marks of academia. There are wonderful pictures on the wall of the great scholars dating back to the early 1800’s; Warfield, Hodge(s), Machen, (before the ‘split’), Metzger, etc. I’m sure it creates a sense of pride to learn in a place with such an impressive heritage. Yes, I am talking about Princeton, but as I was driving home my mind turned to Fuller.

I began to think about all of the great scholars from Fuller who through the years have made such an impact on the church. I thought about professors whom I never had the privilege of meeting. One of the most significant changes in my life came in college after reading George Ladd’s New Testament Theology, as well many of his other works. Ladd rid me of Dispensationalism and taught me to see the Bible in terms of the progression of Salvation History. My eschatological views were completely changed, and although Ladd was not a Pentecostal, I found his theological approach a better fit for Pentecostals than the one Pentecostal’s were using. I will never cease to be amazed by the work of Geoffrey Bromiley; a fine theologian who I can thank every time I pick up a volume of Kittel in English. One of the major reasons I came to Fuller was because while I was in college I continually came across the same names in my research: Hubbard, Brown, Martin, Allen. I still refer to Colin Brown’s class notes (with footnotes and page numbers . . .because he always had them memorized). David Hubbard was a great leader who kept Fuller thriving through a period of turbulent theological debates. He was a fervent and scholarly preacher and I loved hearing him speak. Leslie Allen was a prophet for the prophets. Ralph Martin’s lectures on historical backgrounds confirmed to me the importance of historical study for understanding the text. Richard Mouw challenged my conservatism and at the same time made me glad to be an Evangelical. During my time at Fuller I learned to teach by watching a man who became my Ph.D. mentor. Donald Hagner’s classroom style joined scholarship, whit and humor in a way that made you want to learn. And I’ve only scratched the surface. What a wonderful heritage, I am proud to be a part of it. Harold Lindsell may have thought of Fuller as a “strange case� but “wisdom is vindicated by her deeds� and Fuller stands not only vindicated but distinguished by its extraordinary history and positive impact on the world.

Posted by Dwight at 2:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)